there was a bear who was hungry and a man who was cold, so they
decided to negotiate in a neutral cave. After several hours a
settlement was reached. When they emerged the man had a fur coat and
the bear was no longer hungry (Karrass, 1970: 3).

The
saga of the Middle East peace process and the fanfare
that has surrounded it, obscured the fact that little has been
subjected to detailed systematic and objective analysis. Nor has it
been sufficiently put to the test of negotiation principles in a
fashion that would shed light on its underlying nature and substance.
This caveat hindered addressing important questions regarding the
very structure of the process and its ability to deliver on its
purported promises. It further raises questions as to whether one
could speak of a real peace in the making, or whether the whole
endeavor is merely used as cant. By cant is meant a mode
of expression, or a cast of thought, of which the
effect--irrespective of the motive--is to create a misleading
discrepancy between the natural meaning of words and their practical
significance... (Hugo, 1970: 19).

In
order to understand the full implications and underpinnings of
regional politics it is crucial to reintroduce some basics of the
Arab-Israeli conflict which, have been lost or concealed in the maze
of peace proclamations. This should not be construed as an attempt at
rehashing the polemics, arguments and counter-arguments of the past
five decades or so, but rather as a bid to expose the structural
flaws connected with the policies devised to deal with the current
regional predicament. A careful diagnosis helps in anticipating the
patients prognosis.

The
origin of the Arab-Israeli conflict goes back to the early part of
the twentieth century. The Zionist movement, founded by Theodore
Herzl in the late 1890s, was able to elicit a promise from the
British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, committing His
Majestys Government to the establishment in
Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people... (Heikal,
1996: 28-29).1 Brief statements made by two major figures
involved in the Zionist Jewish state project, serve as an exemplary
of the genesis and stakes of the conflict: the aforementioned Arthur
Balfour and David Ben-Gurion the first Prime Minister of the newly
created state of Israel. Admitting in a memorandum to cabinet
colleagues in 1919, that the Palestinians had been deceived, Balfour
attributed the deception to the Big Four powers (the US,
France, Britain, and Italy), rather than to Britain alone. He stated:
so far as Palestine is concerned, the powers have made no
statement of fact that is not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of
policy which, at least in the letter, they have not always intended
to violate (Heikal, 1996: 30). As for Ben-Gurion, he stated in
1938:

When we say that the Arabs are the aggressors and we defend
ourselves­that is only half the truth. As regards our security
and life we defend ourselves.... But the fighting is only one aspect
of the conflict which is in its essence a political one. And
politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves
(Finkelstein, 1995: 108).

Reverting
to the basics of the Arab-Israeli conflict allows us not to lose
sight of the politics of injustice as an inherent source of
antagonisms. The moral foundations of the Arab-Israeli conflict do
not simply lie in the realm of competing perceptions, but in veracity
and justice. Its essence, as Balfours and Ben-Gurions
words clearly suggest, is born in a historical injustice
inflicted rather than in a current violence perpetrated against the
Palestinians. Not in a conflict between two rights, as Albert
Einstein has philosophized, but a situation in which one party is
clearly an aggressor and the other a victim.2 To frame the
matter differently would sound reminiscent of Harry Trumans
cynical aphorism if you cant convince them, confuse
them.

In
order for such politics not to constitute the sown seeds of a future
more violent and bitter collision, an important analytical
distinction must be made between conflict resolution and
settlement. The former refers to the transformation of
relationships in a particular case by the solution of the problems
which, led to the conflictual behavior in the first place. The
latter designates the suppression of _ conflict by
coercive means, or by bargaining and negotiation in which relative
power determines the outcome (Burton, 1990: 3). Resolution must
incorporate the principle of Justice, the salience of which
has made the Palestinian issue the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Otherwise, it would simply collapse into a reduced settlement
arrangement.

Peace
Transformation and the Politics of Injustice

The
peace process has attempted to circumvent, transform, and
conceptually obliterate the true nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict
by resorting to conventional Western conflict resolution and power
politics mechanisms. These mechanisms fundamentally altered the
political agenda of the conflict through subterfuge and issue
transformation, imposing and maintaining an asymmetric power
relationship in favor of the Arabs adversary. A development
facilitated by systemic and regional changes arising from the
collapse of the Soviet Union, the Second Gulf War and the destruction
of Iraq, and American-Israeli military and scientific cooperation.
Superordinate axes were introduced in order to change the regime of
alliances. For the purposes of creating overlapping space, moderate
Arab and Jewish forces supporting peace were supposedly
to be aligned against radicals or extremists
across both societies, opposing it. A closed Arab agenda would have
set Islamists and incumbent regimes, at least in principle, as
natural allies against a common Israeli enemy. Arab governments
instead, have sought to establish common cause with Israel in
fighting Islamic resistance to such open concessional schemes. This
open agenda evolved into one of confronting the effects
of injustice rather than its causes, changing the political
constellation supporting the original principles and re-connecting
interests in a fashion that cuts across closed foundational
considerations.

Back
in January 1989, President Hosni Mubarak (1995) of Egypt proclaimed
that he and other Arab leaders were supported in their search for
peace, among other actors, by the peace loving forces in Israel
itself. To make his starting point clear, he indicated that
after all the sacrifices due to previous wars with Israel, he was
not ready to take more risks (Mubarak, 1995: 546-547). In one
stroke, Mubarak was acknowledging the conflict to be one of costs
rather than of entitlements, conveying a willingness to play by the
rules of the opponent rather than his own. A less than inspiring
overture from someone engaged in a protracted and gruesome process of
conflict management. Expressing his rather limited understanding of
the Vietnamese case as an example of a war that was settled
only through negotiations, Mubarak failed to relate the outcome
to the conditions on the

ground and from there on draw the relevant conclusions. The
Vietnamese had been willing to take risks and consequently were
successful in imposing their will on a much more powerful adversary.

According
to Glenn Snyder and Paul Diesing, inferior power is not in and of
itself the most important determinant of outcome. Resolve plays an
extremely important role as well. The military inferiority of
one party may be compensated by its greater interests engaged, thus
making the parties equally resolved. A militarily stronger party may
be less resolved in the crisis than its opponent if it
does not value its interests as highly as the opponent values his
(Snyder & Diesing, 1977: 498). Exacerbating their military
inferiority by translating it into a lack of determination, the Arab
partys starting point to negotiations conversely, was to
concede entitlement claims from the very outset. For to recognize
Israel, is invariably to recognize the right to dispossess the
Palestinians and to occupy Arab land in defense of such
dispossession. This gradual yet steady concessionary Arab behavior
served implicitly and/or explicitly to self-condemn earlier policies
and stances adopted vis-a-vis Israel, and to undermine the justice
principle. In essence, the Arabs arrived at a situation in which they
became susceptible to recognizing their values to be, if not wrong,
then at least faulty. Since at a point they became actually willing
to relinquish what they had considered sacred for the past five
decades or so, further pressure, so the justified expectation would
be, may lead them to concede other rights and Jerusalem as well. The
late king Hasan of Morocco and president to the Jerusalem Committee,
for instance, had indicated that Jerusalem constituted to the Arabs
nothing more than the sacred sites, such as Al-Aqsa Mosque
(Hasan, 1999: 172). Statements of the kind undermine rights to land
restoration and liberation.

Such
precedents introduced structural transformations capable of
concomitantly changing the psychological distribution of power
heavily in favor of Israel. It emasculated the Arab position, first
and foremost at this level, from defiance to one of virtual
submission. Their practical manifestations include the degradation of
religious consciousness, which is necessary if Jerusalem is to be
compromised, moral and spiritual decadence in order for people to
forsake values such as Jihad and the undermining of national and
historical self-confidence so as to justify defeatism. Together with
the media and mind-altering changes in Arab educational systems, they
came to constitute what President Clinton has termed education
for peace. As a settlement mechanism the peace
process, has recast the substance of the conflict by steadily
creating the appropriate environmental means-ends framework for such
concessions to be made.

Negotiation
constitutes the art of the dialectics of wills that use force
(and/or peaceful measures) to resolve their conflict (Luttwak,
1987: 241). Strategies, tactics and skill, in addition to options and
resources available, constitute the pillars of its dynamics. Their
overriding principle is for one side to take advantage, to the extent
possible, of the adversarys weaknesses, loopholes, and
oversights. The outcome configuration largely determines the
privileged or non-privileged translations of any proposed agreements,
and heavily influences the subsequent order of events. In this sense,
negotiation is a double- edged sword. It may resolve conflicts or it
may exacerbate them. Setting detailed blueprints or axioms predictive
of the ensuing results of a negotiating process therefore, is by no
means an easy task. It is important nevertheless, to underscore the
inter-linked premises that where one ends up depends on where
one starts (Raiffa, 1982: 215);that the final outcome of negotiations usually reflects
the relative power configuration of the parties concerned and; that
negotiating outcomes not only emanate from objective material
conditions, but as importantly, from subjective psychological
fortitude. Thus, the weaker side in particular must exhibit a good
measure of steadfastness in order to establish a credibility
threshold for any demands made or positions upheld. Otherwise,
diminished will power would inevitably translate into a one sided
open agenda in which--as far as the privileged party is
concerned--agreement may not necessarily be preferred to
non­agreement. Unequal costs emanating from a failure to agree,
together with an asymmetric capability to modify the reference
structure, constitute two determining factors of negotiation
outcomes. This is especially so in as far as they reflect not simply
an imbalance in power resources but also in control relations.
As a reflection of structural asymmetry, they allow for the
unilateral alteration of the rules of the game and for redefining the
norms which all actors are expected to follow in their mutual
relations (Hopmann, 1978: 143; Vayrynen, 1991: 4-5). Once this stage
has been reached, it substantively ceases to be negotiation
since, the weak, to quote Henry Kissinger, do not
negotiate (Finkelstein, 1995: 237).

Both
the Americans and the Israelis believed that a preliminary
step-by-step negotiating approach, rather than a comprehensive one,
would contribute to undermining the famous Arab consensus, agreed at
the Khartoum summit in August 1967, of no talks, no
recognition, no peace (Field, 1994: 384). The purpose was to
divide the Arab World, win de facto recognition of a few
countries and put the Israelis in a stronger position when they came
to negotiate directly with the front-line states and the
Palestinians. The idea behind such a strategy which, underscored
Kissingers negotiating style, was to build positions of
strength with an active diplomacy pressing for settlement
(Kissinger, 1994: 467ff). Israels tactics as Yehoshafat Harkabi
(1977: 103) had alluded to as early as 1977, was to bring the Arabs
into ... step by step, practical settlements and interim
agreements as a gradual incremental process of interlocking
the rivals into positive arrangements which may make it more
difficult for them to revert to open conflict and war.3
Or in a more recent statement by a British diplomat, which mirrors
the same position, to create a complex architecture of
Arab-Israeli connections... that will not be easily demolished
(Field, 1994: 368). Such tactics were consistent with the overall
strategy of detaching Egypt from the Arab-Israeli conflict, isolating
Syria, and cantonizing the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Above all, they have succeeded in breaking the necessary link between
statecraft and war. Once all this had been achieved, Israel reversed
its position, with the former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu calling for a package approach that circumvents
earlier agreements made (1997a: 39).

The
Peace-Justice Dialectics

Power
relations based on considerations of order and might frequently
offend the sense of justice, and cannot but fuel the
emotions of resentment, anger, and tension which, ultimately lead to
violence. Notions of injustice, as a backlash against perceived
disparities between prerogatives and benefits, always remain an
inherent and perpetual risk factor (Lerner, 1981: 12-13). 'Peace,'
merely as the opposite of violence rather than as a reflection of
justice is unlikely to overcome or rectify such concerns. Injustices
inflicted by the Western colonial legacy on the Arabs in general and
the Palestinians in particular have characterized the nature of the
conflict from its very inception as one of entitlements-benefits. The
erupting sense of injustice triggered intense and unique emotional
responses which, could not be quantified solely in terms of tangible
indices or reduced simply to an aversion of loss and an appetite for
gain. Phenomenologically it engage(d) powerful passions
that have the effect of increasing the stridency of demands,
amplifying intransigence, reducing sensitivity to threats and value
trade-offs, increasing the willingness to run risks, and increasing
the likelihood of violent behavior (Welch, 1993: 20). This
helps explain the drive behind the martyrdom bombings perpetrated by
Islamic militant organizations such as Hamas, Hizbollah and Jihad,
and allows putting their militancy in perspective. Their actions
largely constitute the observable symptoms of the unobservable
motivation and need to respond to group insult with rage (Burton,
1984: 13). Referring to these organizations as terrorist structures
opposing peace comprises an altering discursive mechanism which seeks
to eliminate the entitlement-benefits discrepancy context in favor of
one re­constructed and based on cost-benefits. The former
then is depicted as irrational and the latter as rational. Historical
experiences however, show that when basic entitlements are at stake
against overwhelming odds, less rationality is needed, and actually
fares better, than more rationality. For instance, the Czechs
behavior with respect to Nazi Germanys demands on their land,
in Michael Handels (1981: 91) words, was too rational
in response to a military threat they believed they could not win out
against in the long run. This was in stark contrast to the Finns and
the North Vietnamese who were less calculating, more emotional, and
more determined to fight against the overwhelming powers of both the
Soviet Union and the United States respectively. The Finns, while
losing twice, earned respect and admiration and perhaps made
themselves less attractive as potential satellites. In the case of
the North Vietnamese, they ultimately prevailed and won a war in
which they virtually had lost all the battles. One can not help but
wonder what the outcome might have been had the Vietnamese,
alternatively like the Arabs, started doubting themselves. The
constructed peace discourse, based on such self-doubts,
makes it immensely easier for the Americans and Israelis to
manipulate parties whose strategic calculations can be transformed
toward cost-benefit quantification (the Czech option). This as
opposed to actors who consciously adhere to their own strategic
imperatives, irrespective of costs (the Finnish or Vietnamese
option). The former constitutes a strategic victory, the latter a
strategic challenge.

The
justice motive differs from loss aversion or appetite for gain in two
further respects: prescriptively and extensively.
Prescriptively, the very desire to see justice done though the
earth may perish is a very strong drive embedded in basic and
non-negotiable human needs and values. This sets them in stark
contrast to material valuations based on economy or self-interest.
Extensively, it does not overreach to what people simply would like
to have, but rather to what they consider to be their entitlements.
In this respect, it is categorical and demanding of nothing less than
full satisfaction. People within the entitlement-benefits value
matrix are usually willing to incur a heavy price for potentially
less useful things they consider a matter of right. They are also
more willing to trade-off or forswear pursuing goods which, they
would like to have but to which they do not necessarily feel
particularly entitled. The mode
of reasoning involved in the defense of ones entitlements,
therefore, differs fundamentally from the mode of reasoning
involved in the pursuit of other goods: it tends to be categorical
and deontological rather than utilitarian (Welch, 1993: 20-21).

Substantively,
Israel with the aid of American indifference if not complicity,
attempted to reconcile the entitlement-benefits discrepancy. This was
done not by meeting Palestinian legitimate demands for statehood, but
by transforming the rules in a fashion that would increasingly lead
the Palestinian Authority, headed by Yasser Arafat, to act--if not
actually believe--as if it has misconceived the scope and content of
Palestinian entitlements (Welch, 1993: 20). According to Harkabi
(1977: 88), making the opponent uneasy and apologetic about his
objective, is a first small step in the process of its erosion,
inducing him to start discarding it.

The
expectations of the Palestinian negotiator presumably anticipated a
Palestinian state at the end of the road. The pattern of negotiations
it followed, however, appears in all practicalities to have reduced
the Palestinian Authority (PA) to nothing more than an auxiliary
Israeli security structure. Israels further de-linking of
security matters from changes taking place on the ground in Jerusalem
and the West Bank and therefore from the political heart of
the peace process, reflected the divesting of the
purported Palestinian/Arab negotiating formula. Israel continues to
maintain its own constants and payoffs in terms of a unified
Jerusalem under its control, entitlement to most of the West Bank
(notwithstanding redeployment maneuverings), monopolized access to
nuclear weapons, priority of its security concerns over all other
considerations, and eventual access to the water resources of the
River Nile and the Euphrates (Lesch, 1992: 158).4

Americas
rather explicit recognition of the legitimacy of this agenda was
manifested most conspicuously by the Congresss vote (even if
non-binding) to transfer the US embassy to Jerusalem by 1999. US
envoy Dennis Ross statements, during his August 1997 visit to
the region, in the wake of bombings in Jerusalem by Hamas militants,
attempted to further entrench the Palestinian negotiator within this
de-linking structure. He called upon Israelis and Palestinians to
work as partners against a common threat from militants,
and emphasized that security is something that serves Israeli
interests and Palestinian interests... (Goller, 1997: A15).
Israeli security was to become the Palestinian Authoritys own,
irrespective of whether or not Palestinian demands for statehood can
or will be met. In return for Arafats resumption of security
cooperation with Israel to rein in Islamic militants, a vague promise
was given by Ross of an upcoming broad US peace initiative.
Supposedly it was to address Palestinians' complaints against Israel,
including reportedly, some kind of freeze on Israeli expansion
of colonies (conveniently termed settlements), and an acceleration of
talks on a final peace settlement (Assad, 1997). However, American
Secretary of State Madeleine Albrights response during her
subsequent visit to the region in September 1997, to complaints that
Israel was strengthening its grip on Jerusalem, expanding Jewish
colonies and leveling the homes of Palestinians, was unequivocal.
There is no moral equivalent, she stated between
killing people and building houses.... The Palestinian Authority must
take unilateral steps and actions to root out the terrorist
infrastructure (Schweid, 1997). The problem with unilateral
gestures as Kissinger (1994: 488) has indicated, is that they remove
a key negotiating asset. In general, diplomats rarely pay for
services already rendered... Moreover, they tempt the adversary
...to drag out the negotiations in order to determine whether
other unilateral gestures may be forthcoming. Not only that,
but Albright was also making the connection between militant acts and
the peaceful process of building houses, rather than to the breaking
of agreements and Israeli colonial expansion. In as far as she was
interested in accomplishing any significant results, it was to call
for holding financial contributions to Islamist groups, and to cajole
Arab regimes into attending the upcoming economic conference to be
held in Doha, Qatar, in November of that year. Ross earlier
promises--and for that matter any upcoming ones--to Arafat are
unlikely to be any different fromthe British WWI superfluous
offerings to give Arabs their independence in exchange for support in
the war effort against Ottoman Turkey. In essence, nothing has been
learned, nothing has been forgotten.

Arafats
relationship with Islamist groups is significantly complex to allow
for the above demands to be conceded, at least in their US-Israeli
ideal. Much as he would like to clamp down on their infrastructure,
he remains strongly constrained as to how far he could go. In many
ways, his fate has become intertwined with their own to the extent
that by destroying them he could virtually be committing political
suicide. Eradicating Hamas and Jihad could greatly diminish the need
for his presence as a party altogether. When newspaper photos had
depicted Arafat embracing Hamas figures, they were basically showing
him holding to his last trump card. This is where the inherent
contradictions of a common security framework can be most strongly
felt. The major caveat is that while the Israelis would like to see
Islamic opposition eradicated, the most that Arafat could do, if for
no other reason than to ensure his own survival, is to contain and
weaken but not eliminate them. The logical outcome is that both the
PA and Israel can only pursue a parallel rather than a common
security policy. This poses Arafats dilemma. It serves to
project him both as a collaborator, to many Palestinians, and as an
ineffective and uncooperative negotiator, as the US and
the Israelis allege. Such an ambivalent outcome could only lead to
the eventual erosion of the PAs legitimacy, forcing it to
control its own people by increasingly coercive measures. As Glenn E.
Robinson (1997: 54) has stated, ...PLO failure to deliver
Palestinian rights will compel the PA to tighten the noose around its
own society. Open politics in the midst of national failure is not a
recipe for regime survival. It should come as no surprise
therefore that Arafat would accept internal security guardianship by
the CIA on his people through the Wye River agreements.

Israeli
security officers further have warned that enfeebling Arafat could
open the door for Hamas to achieve political dominance in Gaza and
parts of the West Bank (Drozdiak, 1997b: A14). Capitalizing on such a
trade-off, Arafat continues to project himself as the one most
capable of controlling and possibly coopting those groups. In as much
as the Israelis may loathe him, he stands as the best of two evils.
Arafat has become an Israeli interest and safety valve. His rumblings
that he will not be dictated to by Israel do not hide his real
concern. The Washington Post, referring to statements made by
Palestinian officials, has indicated that he remains constrained by
the fear of generating sympathy for Islamic militants by acquiescing
to Israeli demands (Drozdiak, 1997a: A01). His holding of national
unity talks, during the latter half of August 1997, and then
again with other dissenting Palestinian groups in September 1999,
simply aimed at bringing militants into the political process as a
way to dilute their influence and persuade them to abandon their
actions and opposition. This reflected a typical pattern of political
cooptation reminiscent of Egyptian President Sadats policies
toward Islamist opposition and which ultimately proved fatal for him.
Furthermore, Arafat continues to concentrate power in his hands.
While attempting to weaken all other forces and/or rudimentary social
institutions (most of which have an Islamic identity), as is being
demanded by the Israeli side, he continues to personally control
money offered by international donors. With virtually no
accountability, Arafat in all but name has become the PA (Robinson,
1997: 45). This significantly consolidates the position of the
Israeli negotiator who by constructing control structures to handle
the PA chief could indirectly administer the
tribe as well. A virtual situation is thus created in
which the grand strategy of one side is in effect being tackled in
the framework of personal, tribal and fiefdom politics,
by the Arab side. Though short of a state, the PA is not an
aberration but rather a typical regional structure, where it only
takes control of the leader to dominate the hierarchical
socio-political configuration.

Peace
Concessions and the Strategy of Defeat

Empirical
studies regarding winners and losers in negotiations have indicated
that parties with higher aspiration levels and wanting more, actually
did get more. In a conflictive non-cooperative bargaining process,
opponents with high aspirations, irrespective of their skill or
power, ended up as winners in every case where they opposed low
aspirants. They indicated furthermore, that negotiators who made the
first compromise ended up being losers in the final outcome (Karrass,
1970: 17-18 & 19). From the outset and as a reflection of
collapse of will, the Egyptian side had declared itself desperate to
opt out of confrontation. Since the Israeli side did not exhibit such
desperation, it becomes clear that negotiation terms can only be
strategically tilted in its favor, with the outcome most likely to
reflect that condition. In light of such findings, it follows that
the strategic concessions initiated by the late President Anwar Sadat
through the Camp David regime, and in whose footsteps a number of
other Arab leaders are following, can only lead to disastrous
consequences for the Arab World.

Such
a pattern of concessions can never be fair or just to the Arabs due
to several reasons. Firstly, concessions are fair only as long as the
negotiators have no need to revise their original expectations about
what the ultimate agreement will be or about their strategic goals of
entitlement (Bartos, 1978: 22). Yet, while Mubaraks chief
political adviser Usama al-Baz conceded that the conflict between the
Arabs and Israel was over boundaries and no longer over the latters
existence, former Israeli chief of staff Raphael Eitan declared the
Arab-Israeli conflict to be civilizational (Kayhan
al-Arabi, 1998: 11). This reflects a remarkable strategic turn of
events in favor of the Israeli negotiator, confirming the conclusion
that a negotiating opponent will concede in opposite proportion to
the adversary's concession rate (Cross 1978: 29).

Secondly,
negotiation requires that parties be constrained by the same rules
which, neither side have the right nor capability to alter
unilaterally. If negotiation is a matter of finding the proper
formula as a referent principle, and then implementing detail
(Zartman 1978: 76-77), and if one party has the capability of
changing it at will while the other is constrained by it, then no
element or mechanism of joint decision-making does in reality exist.
Both parties cease to share equal stalemating power, and the
asymmetry is such that one party could at will alter the terms of the
negotiating formula from land for peace as formulated at the Madrid
conference in October 1991, to one of peace for peace or security for
peace. Strictly speaking then, there are no negotiations taking
place between the Arabs and the Israelis even as they continue to
talk to each other. Israels formula alteration capability
reorders the whole process in its own image against the opposite
number, a strategic advantage that is unlikely to be thrown away
whether the Likud party is in power or Labor. Yet, Arab negotiators
continue to project the personalized nature of their own governance
onto the other even when the Labor party had been doing
by stealth what the Likud party implemented unpresumptuously.5
Negotiations in October 1999, between the Palestinian and the newly
elected Israeli Labor government, which set security matters in the
hands of the Israelis on the safe passage road linking
Gaza to the Western Bank, actually constituted an additional
Palestinian concession to the security formula. This concession was
more than could have been possible earlier during the incumbency of
Likuds conspicuously intransigent leadership.

Such
attitude reflects Arab susceptibility to (and naive entanglement
into) the psychologically deceptive good-guy (Labor)/bad-guy (Likud)
routine. Within this framework, two parties on the same side stage a
quarrel related to seemingly opposed stances with respect to a common
adversary. The good guy offers promises of reward if the opponent
cooperates, the bad guy raises the specter of punishments if no
cooperation was forthcoming (Fisher & Ury, 1983:
141-142). Arafat, during his appearance at the United Nations in
October 1998, continued to hold to the belief that the assassinated
Yitzhak Rabin was his partner in peace, and to lament his loss. This
despite Kissingers statement that the latter had repeatedly
brought it to his attention that should the incongruities
of the Oslo agreements become pervasive, he would initiate a
strategic reassessment with all the greater determination because of
a clear conscience (Kissinger, 1997: C07). In between Labor
(good guy) and Likud (bad guy) the psychological fabric of the target
opponent is undermined, softening his will to the level of
concessionary pliance in order to escape emotional distress. Any
semblance of concession offered by the good guy would then be seen as
a big favor to be reciprocated with a supposedly sizable concession
lest ammunition be provided to alternative radical or
extremist forces. A dynamic of escalating demands for every
concession offered, not necessarily made, is thus introduced into the
negotiating framework.6 Arab negotiators should not act
perplexed as they come to face this situation with a Labor
negotiator.

A
dual routine of this kind, one should add, requires formal autonomous
domestic institutional structures which, do not exist in the Arab
world. One party to the negotiating table is capable of playing a
game that the other side is structurally deprived off, and as such is
at a constant disadvantage. Having been situated in an external rule
structure the Arabs have come up against a no win situation. This
applies whether they make one decision or its opposite. It should
come as no surprise that Arafat has lost on both accounts when he
continued to threaten to declare a Palestinian state in May 1999 only
to back down as expected. To declare a state was simply to end up
with a cluster of disparate villages beyond which he could make no
further demands (assuming Israel does not respond by reentering the
territory under PA authority). Having retracted however, he continues
to lose much of his already shaky credibility not only with regard to
his people, but also vis-a-vis the enemy. In strategic terms he has
continuously and perpetually been placed on a horn of a
dilemma.

Thirdly,
geo-strategic considerations related to the very nature of the
Zionist Jewish homeland project continue to play a determining role
in the negotiation outcomes and the politics of concessions. In a
superbly detailed and documented three volumes study about secret
negotiations between the Arabs and Israel over the last hundred years
or so, Mohamed Heikal (1996b: 27ff) illustrated that the idea of
establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine hark back to the days of
Napoleon Bonapartes French occupation of Egypt (1798-1801).
This clearly was long before Herzl and the events of WW II. As part
of his grand strategy, Napoleon believed that Egypt and Syrias
security, both being situated along the southern and eastern shores
of the Mediterranean respectively, were historically and
strategically intertwined. In order to secure his power base in both
countries, he believed that a foreign (Jewish) structure at their
meeting point had to be created. The idea was to separate and prevent
them from coming together in any form of common political framework.
With the defeat of the Napoleonic armies this strategy was
appropriated and actively pursued by Great Britains Lord
Palmerston, during the first half of the 19th century onward. While
the reduction of the Palestinian issue to a matter of land and
territory veiled the significance of this purpose, the Israeli
negotiators could not but harbor it, albeit indirectly, as a
strategic factor in their policy calculations.

Responding to a question by Newsweek as to whether he
envisions a Palestinian state, Netanyahu answered a categorical no.
More interestingly, he added, ...I believe that the granting of
unlimited self-determination would mean that we would face a
Palestinian army with heavy weapons, a state that could make military
pacts with countries like Iran or Iraq... (Netanyahu, 1997a:
39). Israel, he declared, will not reduce itself to a fragile
ghetto on the shores of the Mediterranean (Netanyahu, 1997b:
13). Given that the envisioned Palestinian pseudo-state could hardly
pose such a serious threat as Netanyahu claims, even if such pacts
were presumably to be made, more must be read between the lines. The
Israeli negotiator seems to be hinting that no mass of land, however
small yet adequate enough to help re-establish the severed
Egyptian-Levant strategic link, would be allowed. Implicitly
underscored is not the issue of a reduced territorial size, which had
actually sustained this state until 1967, but one of role as a
link-severing structure. This attribute contributes to a large extent
to Israels geo-strategic relevance. The Israeli negotiator is
unlikely to accept a condition in which, the Jewish state could be
by-passed or cut through. This after all, is what could turn Israel
into a ghetto, and this is largely what will contribute to
determining the Israeli position regarding a sovereign Palestinian
state. Former Prime Minister and Labor Party leader Shimon Peres
suggestion that Israel should be allowed to take the reins of
leadership in the Middle East instead of Egypt was part and
parcel of this consistent vision (Gerges, 1995: 71).

The
coming of Ehud Barak to power brought little change despite the
visible sigh of relief among Arab officials. In the same vein as his
predecessor, he called for combining certain parts of the
1998 Wye River agreement with Oslo's final status negotiations. Not
only that, but shortly after he had come to power, his government
expanded colonies construction at a much faster pace than that of
Netanyahu's (Al-Ahram, 1999a: 8). In addition, he declared
that Jerusalem was to remain the eternal and indivisible
Capital of the Jewish state and, that there would be no return
to the pre-1967 borders. He also rejected the return of Palestinian
refugees to their homeland, and suggested only the possibility of a
withdrawal on rather than from the Syrian
heights. These positions were accompanied by a stream of statements
declaring a commitment to peace, and even setting a year 2000
deadline for an agreement (Usher, 1999).

Finally,
while any concessions that the Israeli side may offer or make can
only be from gains and profits acquired at the expense of the Arab
side, reciprocal concessions by the Arabs can only be offered from
their own capital. A framework of mutual concessions while in
appearance procedurally fair hides a substantive injustice inflicted
on one negotiating party. If the claim is made that this is natural
given the facts on the ground and that Israel has acquired Arab land
by winning militarily, whatever the justifications may be, and that
the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must, then
the whole negotiating exercise becomes one in which the victor is
basically imposing its will over the vanquished. This essentially,
dissolves the very substance of negotiation and reduces it to one of
how to yield the best surrender scenario.

The
Palestinian leader committed a serious strategic mistake when he
conceded to interim agreements at the expense of postponing the
fundamental issues of Jerusalem, the refugees, and the fate of Jewish
colonies for future talks, (i.e. emphasizing the process of
interaction rather than the content of the negotiated positions). In
so doing he was following in Sadat's prenegotiation footsteps when,
together with Israel, both had sought to narrow the upcoming
negotiation agenda to be undertaken at Camp David, by elimination or
postponing the most controversial issues. The purpose was to reduce
uncertainty and complexity and to lessen anticipated costs for Israel
(Stein 1989b: 255; Stein 1989a: & 174-205).7 Blunders
of the kind were a reflection of the Arab/Palestinian negotiators
inability to rank strategic priorities of collective national
interests, goals and objectives, and their confusion of means and
ends. Within the framework of a confidence building process as
opposed to that of content, top priority tends to be credited to
current and ad hoc problems as opposed to long term strategic
considerations. Each and every concern as a result, becomes a matter
of top priority to be addressed by the force of circumstances,
basically propelling a policy of survival that renders equal
importance to hierarchical issues. Strategies, however, must be set
on a priority basis. If priorities are confused, which a framework
based on process rather than content actually leads to, then no long
term collective national interest strategy could be focused upon, nor
could a decision about the channeling and commitment of resources be
made. Process becomes an end in and of itself rather than the means
it is supposed to be. This helps explain Baraks call upon Syria
to join the peace of the brave and Syrias sober
reluctance to do so. Syrias approach reflects an astute
awareness of the dimensions of the conflict, which go beyond land.
Unlike Sadat and Arafat, Hafez Asad does not seem inclined in his
pattern of negotiation to lose the whole (Syria) so as to bring back
the part (the Golan heights) into his fold.

Such
loss of strategic balance is what has allowed Peres to acknowledge
that at Oslo II Israel had in fact screwed the Palestinians
(quoted by Chomsky 1996: 6). Whatever Western conflict management
framework is put forth, Arabs can only emerge as losers. As Carl
Schmitt (1976: 49) has observed,

...as long as a people exists in the political sphere this people
must, even if only in the most extreme case...determine by itself the
distinction of friend and enemy. Therein resides the essence of its
political existence. When it no longer possesses the capacity or the
will to make this distinction, it ceases to exist politically. If it
permits this decision to be made by another then it is no longer a
politically free people and is absorbed into another political
system.

In
ending the intifada and signing the Oslo accords Arafat gave up two
of his most important trump cards without receiving anything of
substance in return. His errors further lifted any embarrassment
considerations standing in the way of other Arab and non-Arab
countries normalizing and establishing relations with Israel. This
effectively bolstered its regional and international status and ended
its isolation. The PA winded up wasting the very limited leverage it
might have had. In the process it placed itself in its enemys
grip, and in that of its American ally, in much the same fashion,
although under much worse conditions, as the Egyptian negotiator had
done earlier.

With
the exception of the highly skilled Asad of Syria, a look at the
behavioral characteristics of Arab decision-makers and their
negotiating competence reveals a significant propensity to modify the
values at stake in a fashion that ultimately challenges their own
entitlements. This means that a pattern of unfair concessions is
being made which will continue to manifest loss of control over
economic and political outcomes. An opened Arab agenda was, being
unfairly reciprocated by a closed Israeli one. And while failure to
match concessions may be a necessary though not sufficient condition
of unfairness, the latter condition will inevitably exist if the
opponents payoffs have not changed (Bartos, 1978: 22).
Palestinian rights and demands for viable statehood are unlikely to
go heeded or materialize since nothing in the negotiating pattern of
the PA would allow for such an outcome. Parallel expectations on the
broader Arab front, continue further, to decreasingly vary in light
of their adversarys initiative dynamics. Such concessionary
patterns continue to undermine Arab political existence.

The
Politics of Peace Dialectics

The
key toward winning a negotiating outcome is to change the perception,
and in the process, the stakes of the opponent. As a reflection of
American thought logic and presumably their intent, I. William
Zartman and Maureen Berman (1982) provided an example of two
antagonists clashing over the same piece of land--without naming any
specific parties. If both parties perceptions could
be changed, they reasoned, so as to convince them that it is the
resources which the land holds that matter, then the two may be able
to negotiate a deal whereby one can be the owner of the territory
while the other shares in the benefits of the resources (Zartman &
Berman, 1982: 13). Translated into the peace process
context, Arab perceptions are to be changed in favor of remunerative
incentives (e.g. through economic cooperation, joint economic
projects, and aid), while Israel is to acquire the land and perhaps
even, the water resources. Anis Mansour (1999), a columnist in
Egypts Al-Ahram newspaper, for instance wrote that the
countries of the Nile basin would not object to Egypt extending the
Nile water to adjacent countries such as Israel, Palestine and
Jordan if they were to be adequately paid, and if Egypt was to be
remunerated for allowing water to pass through its territory
(Mansour, 1999: 36).8 Since such statements are unlikely
to be made nonchalantly, given the Egyptian social, economic and
political scene, one can not but anticipate further concessions of
the kind down the road. Especially so when they were published only
one day after the same newspaper had disclosed an American commitment
to Israel to assist it in accessing water resources from within
the region (Al-Ahram, 1999b: 1 & 4).

The
whole issue is transformed from entitlement values to utilitarian
calculations. The strategic cost of such a transformation would be
tremendous. Rather than being the most powerful Nile basin country at
its downstream, Egypt instead would be squeezed between a more
powerful Israel (which would now become a Nile basin country!) in
control both at downstream and at the source. This is not difficult
to gauge if one is to closely observe the American-Israeli
collaboration in the heart of Africa. Matters could be worse of
course, if that state were to have commensurate access to the
Euphrates. Israel would make economic, territorial and strategic
strides, while the Arabs, notwithstanding some meager financial
benefits, if any, would lose on all accounts.

Much
of the inherent failures of Arab decision-makers and negotiators
arise from their lack of a solid and participating national
constituency. Their perennial legitimacy crisis and personalized
governing style inevitably reflects on their performance and conflict
management competence. In his book Egypts Road to Jerusalem,
Boutros Ghali (1997), a key figure in the negotiations which led to
the Camp David accords, indicated that the Egyptian delegation to the
US did not know how to prepare for the conference. Nor was the
general strategy upon which to base its movements clear. As he
sarcastically suggested, it was said that Napoleon Bonaparte
never set a military plan until he was in the battle field. It
dallied my hopes that inspiration would come to us when we arrive at
Camp David. However, I did not come across signs of Napoleonic genius
among us (Ghali 1997: 137, author's translation). This
testimony, in itself, constitutes a most serious indictment of the
pattern of negotiation followed by the Egyptian regime.

Such
indictments, however, do not end with Ghali. Raymond Cohen (1995) in
addition observed that ...surely the single most noteworthy
feature of the Camp David conference of September 1978 was Sadats
willingness to place his own fate and that of his nation in the hands
of the leader of a foreign power-President Carter. Being at a
total loss as to the next step that should follow after his visit to
Jerusalem, a condition emanating precisely from the absence of a
clear vision or strategy, Sadats only recourse was to rely on
the American President. In as far as he had a strategy, it was to
put himself completely into American hands...project(ing)
assumptions about the value of client status onto his relationship
with the United States (Cohen 1995: 55). Cohen cited both
Kissinger and former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance to make his
point. According to Kissinger, Sadat worked at identifying Egypts
interest with Americas own, repeatedly challenging the US to
enter the negotiations not as mediator but as participant, or else
he offered to accept what was put forward to him (Cohen, 1995:
55, emphasis added). In essence, he put his full trust in the
American president willing, in the words of Vance, to take
Carters word that a given step was necessary... (quoted
by Cohen, 1995: 56). Rarely, as Cohen (1995: 56) described it, can
a patron-client relationship have achieved such pronounced
expression. The logical outcome of this negotiating pattern was
that Carter put Sadats trust to excellent use, although not
quite in the way that the latter may have expected. The US
president, it turned out, was better able to separate business from
friendship than the Egyptian leader (Cohen, 1995: 56). This
outcome was a product not only of traditional diplomatic frameworks,
such as negotiation, mediation, conciliation and arbitration, but
also the presumably more advanced methods of conflict resolution. The
latter emphasize the process of interaction (such as confidence
building, education for mutual understanding and the pursuit of
super-ordinate goals, including of course economic incentives) rather
than the content of the negotiated positions (Reychler, 1994: 5-7).
The two overlapping approaches nevertheless compromised core issues,
leading Sadat to undermine Arab strategic entitlements in favor of
short­term Egyptian territorial and financial gains. This
ultimately translated into continued foreign domination of that
countrys decision making structure while providing the
negotiating adversary with an opportunity to single out its
fragmented Arab opponents.

The
tragedy is that the Palestinian Authority seems to be following the
same pattern of concessions of the Egyptian negotiator, yet without
the assets and the leverage that the latter possessed. By offering
the Israeli side the strategic concession that the largest and most
powerful Arab country would drop out of the conflict equation, as a
bargaining chip, Egypt could make territorial gains. Those gains came
nevertheless at the cost of a de-militarized Sinai, and almost total
loss of national independence, sovereignty, and self-esteem, as well
as a significantly diminished regional status. In the realm of
strategy (however), a course of action cannot persist indefinitely.
It will tend to evolve into its opposite, unless the logic of
strategy is outweighted by some exogenous change in the
circumstances of the participants (Luttwak, 1987: 18, emphasis
in quote). This exogenous factor was introduced in Israels
favor by eliminating Egypt from the conflict matrix and neutralizing
it as the principal adversary, and is currently being added to by
bringing Turkey into the conflict as an Israeli ally. This is not in
order that the latter may deliver more land subsequently to the rest
of the Arabs, but rather to enjoy a freer hand on Egypts
North-Eastern flank. The Camp David accords, in other words, were the
high points of the peace strategy after which the reversal of
opposites can only set in. The more it is pursued the less the
returns, until a point is reached where negative results can only
ensue.9 As Heikal (1996a: 308, author's translation) has
stated,

there is nothing more dangerous-in regional and international
politics­from a condition of war that has stopped without a
decisive end and without a mutual consent that forsakes (resorting)
to arms. Under such a condition, explosion becomes possible at any
time and without need for convincing reasons: for the reasons are
inherent in this very condition and its nature.

The
above factors essentially constitute the dynamics of the peace
dialectics.

The
Arab negotiators have three main alternatives: 1--to accept whatever
is being imposed on them, seeking the best conditions under the
circumstances, 2--to stall for time hoping for a reversion to the
original land for peace formula, or 3--to counter-transform the
negotiating rules by bringing in their own new formula and redefining
the conflict in terms of its broader religious and strategic horizons
At the same time negotiators would work actively toward the
construction of new regional and systemic alliances. Opting for the
first choice could very well preclude the second but more likely add
fuel to the third. Mubaraks (1997: 21) remark to Netanayahu
that war is ...an old (fashioned) matter...and will not solve
any cause effectively presented the Israeli Prime Minister with
an altered peace for peace formula. Furthermore, when the threat of
economic boycott was furled by the Arab League, as a result of
Israels continued building of colonies in Jabal Ghoneim (Har
Homa) in occupied East Jerusalem, it was declared as a
recommendation rather than as an obligation. Associated
calls for Arab countries to freeze their normalization of relations
with Israel were declined by both Egypt and Jordan, on the grounds
that they were tied to peace agreements with Israel which restricted
them from doing so.

To
put forth a land for peace formula is to make a conditional
statement. Intrinsic to it is a presumed veto power: if there
is no land returned, there will be no peace. But to what extent can
the Arabs exude such credibility? The Arab summit which, had convened
in Cairo in June 1996, announced peace to be a strategic
choice. Such a declaration de facto rendered land a
residual component. If war is not an option nor are economic and
diplomatic sanctions, then this essentially dissolves the Madrid
formula, and its supposedly incorporated veto or conditionality. In
line with Mubaraks remark, the summit effectively reduced the
formula to one of peace for peaces sake. Nations which attempt
to present themselves as unfailingly peaceful to the international
community can hope to obtain little in the way of suasion from any
forces they may have (Luttwak, 1987: 194). If they do not project
much in terms of coercive credibility, sporadic violence will not
uphold the required veto power. Islamist militants bombings for
instance, is not the same thing as war capability, and could be dealt
with at the local security level rather than within the broader
context of the peace process.

Lacking
control over their concession behavior the Arab decision-makers have
contributed to the elimination of the second option altogether, even
though they continue to demand its implementation. From then on, they
can only move and act within the strict confines of an
American-Israeli security framework, tilting the balances heavily in
favor of option one. Netanyahus intransigence and disrespect
for agreements previously signed, and his successors
negotiating pattern simply reflect consistent Israeli strategy and
beliefs, common sense negotiation principles and calculations, and a
well thought out understanding of the hard facts of the evolving
situation. If the Arab negotiators in the course of their
concessionary behavior were willing to undermine their entitlements,
then naturally their opponent would not feel obliged to substantively
revert to the less favorable linkage of land for peace. This goes for
Barak as much as for Netanyahu.

Netanyahu's
less than subtle approach, served to expose three extremely important
factors. In the maze of the perception altering processes that had
overwhelmed the region, those factors were conveniently obscured from
the Arab and Muslim people: 1--Israel's structural and expansionist
threat, masked in terms of security concerns, to the whole region and
not just the Palestinians, 2--the bankruptcy of the Arab regimes, and
3--the true nature and stakes of the civilizational conflict. In as
far as there had been tense relations between the Clinton
administration and Netanyahu, it had to do more with the absence of
the subtlety required for the pursuance of the above strategy-a
strategy which the Labor party is perceived to be much more adept at
directing. Baraks style has been more effective in
reestablishing the space necessary for Arab regimes to make further
concessions. In many respects and contrary to the impression given by
Arab media and officials, Netanyahu has been a blessing in disguise.

The
Third Option

In
what is tantamount to a vicious circle, capitulation can only add to
bitterness, resentment and ultimately to the mobilization of forces
of indigenous resistance. This would be expected to bring forth even
if in the long run option three. The Palestinian core of the
Arab-Israeli conflict obscured the underlying religious and strategic
foundations of the colliding wills. In as long as the focus was on
the presumed confrontation between two nationalisms, Jewish and
Palestinian, over the same piece of land, these more inherent
contradictions were made less visible.

With
the gradual and steady collapse of nationalistic justifications and
with the issue of Jerusalem coming to the forefront, the Arab-Israeli
conflict is being relinked with the religious dimension and its
coextensive strategic underpinnings. This linkage emerges from the
insight that a nations interest derive from its identity
(Huntington, 1997: 1). No longer is the confrontation solely over the
same piece of land or scarce resources, be it territory or water, but
more so over belief systems and basic values. Since Jerusalem is a
religious cause, the clash over it can not be secularized (i.e.
become solely a political issue). As such peace outcomes
and legalities will always remain marginal considerations applicable
in the domain of politics to the extent that the coercive framework
that produced them continues in place. In the realm of religion such
limitations may not function as a long-term viable deterrent. The
religious logic of the conflict would very likely alter the terms of
confrontation from reduced objective calculations to subjective
metaphysical convictions. Such sources of neo-hostility can not be
settled by imposing legal norms and enforcing them against
rule­breakers, since ultimately they are irrelevant to the
conflict. Strategic policies of deterrence are unlikely to contribute
to peace and are more likely to promote conflict as they frustrate
the pursuit of entitlements, identity, and basic values (Burton,
1984: 137-138).

In
the Arab/Islamic World, Islamist groups are mostly motivated by the
justice motive which is value oriented (entitlement-benefits), while
actors committed to the peace process tend to be more
utility oriented (cost-benefits). Militant Islamic groups, and
Muslims in general, continue as a matter of faith and values to
refuse to accept the basic existence of the enemy irrespective of
what takes place at the political level. More fundamentally, these
motives continue to be transferred from one generation to another in
Islamic societies. Secondly, the contending parties to the conflict
do not see anything in common with one another, nor is there any
overwhelming desire or willingness to coexist (Abu-Nimer, 1996:
33-34). Thirdly, while the Palestinian issue is being transformed
through the peace strategy, it is also being counter-transformed into
a core religious principle, a substantive change foreshadowing a
future Islamic-Jewish conflict. Whatever the political outcome of the
peace process, it is unlikely to resolve this broader
confrontation which is now slowly but steadily taking a more ominous
tilt. The constant foundations of Islam limit the possibilities of
absorbing the changes induced or imposed by the peace
process. This poses an acute problem for the application of Western
conflict resolution mechanisms in an Islamic context. If a
negotiating formula is understood to reflect a shared
perception or definition of the conflict that establishes terms of
trade, the cognitive structure of referents for a solution, or an
applicable criterion of justice (Zartman & Berman, 1982:
1-2), then it is clear that it is none of these. Therefore, there is
no negotiating formula in the first place. Negotiation as a
process in which divergent values are combined into an agreed
decision, ... based on ... appropriate stages, sequences, behaviors
and tactics... can only fade into irrelevance (Zartman &
Berman, 1982: 95).

External
mechanisms which, seek to emphasize or artificially construct common
and super­ordinate goals or interests do not apply in this case.
They could very well be seen as just another attempt at superimposing
alien modes of thought and structures. Peace as a process
of de-escalation is not value free and does not bear the same
implications for the different parties. Western power and conflict
resolution principles for instance, frequently surmise that peace
making is not possible until conflicts have ripened
to the extent where costs have escalated to the point at which
parties are prepared to settle (Burton, 1990: 88).
In the process, [d]eciding whether or not to try to de-escalate
a conflict and which strategy to pursue, necessarily involves value
preferences regarding an acceptable outcome (Kriesberg &
Thorson, 1991: 24). While war may be condemned all along, sanctions,
punitive expeditions, pacifications, protection of treaties,
international police, and measures to assure peace remain
(Schmitt, 1976: 79). A sweeping look at the Arab/Islamic World may
help demonstrate the implications: Egypt prostrate and ineffectual,
Syria isolated and pressured, Jordan an American-Israeli vassal,
Palestinians cantonized, Iraq destroyed, Libya and Sudan embargoed,
the Arabian Peninsula virtually occupied, Algeria having undergone a
bloodbath, and Iran and other militant Islamist groups being
contained or crushed. This condition is contrasted with a robust
Jewish State, militarily more powerful than all its potential
adversaries and nuclear capable if not accessible. Given such
asymmetry, no substantive inducements exist for a just resolution.

Furthermore,
to capitalize on the outcome of the Second Gulf War as an issue
transforming event, Field (1994: 385) stressed that as a result of
this war, the Arabs have come to recognize ...not only that
they could not fight Israel but that many of them had no interest
in doing so. A conclusion which the majority of the people in
the Arab World-as distinct from their largely de-legitimized
regimes-may not particularly share, yet which mind and perception
altering mechanisms seek to induce.10 Within this
objective and psychological re-construction of the regional order,
one can perceive Samuel Huntingtons (1993) Clash of
Civilizations argument not simply as an intellectual exercise
to be supported or refuted at the academic-analytic level, but more
so as the theoretical cover for a policy in the actual process of
implementation. This policy attempts to procure and justify the ripe
environmental conditions for the establishment of peace
while reconstructing the Muslim world and crushing grass roots
Islamist groups. To the extent that Islam is an active value that
determines the subjective, and where and when possible the objective
nature of the conflict, it constitutes an organizational
counter-mechanism which will continue to prohibit the alteration of
the conflict structure as a zero-sum game. This stems from Arabs
and Muslims awareness that if American-Israeli peace
is to constitute the regions new interest, this will
require the transformation of the regions identity.
Islam will be attacked on the plane of its basic values not merely on
that of the political.

The
factthat Islam is entitlement driven (content-ontological)
while the peace process is cost articulated
(process-epistemological), sets both on two incommensurable planes of
interaction. Harmonizing thought systems alternatively necessitates
that they be positioned within the same logical framework (Burton,
1990: 89). On the one hand, to harmonize thought logics
in the Arab/Muslim World, with that of the peace strategy
requires that counter-thoughts be either peripheralized and
contained, or if necessary crushed. Identity configurations become at
stake as land, despite its centrality, becomes secondary to more
crucial civilizational considerations. Whereas an intractable
conflict of the Arab-Israeli variety would require the consolidation
and mobilization of a collective Islamic-Arab identity, the
American-Israeli side conversely, has sought to impose the state
secular identity as the highest value. Continued concessions by the
Arab side have allowed their opponents to impose their own desired
configuration. Primary and/or secondary identities are imposed not
chosen as a result, as a direct outcome of the very structure of the
negotiating process. This provided the Americans and the Israelis
with the opportunity to single out the Arab parties. By accomplishing
this purpose they have caused the Arabs to pursue contradictory and
conflicting state policies, which ultimately led to their
fragmentation, bringing them under virtual American (and Israeli)
colonization and/or domination. Even by the standards of primacy of
state values, the Arab state has been a failure.11
The exterme hostility to Islamist currents by parties to the peace
process actually reflects their opposition to any potential
reconfiguration of regional identity in favor of religio-strategic
valuations. Herein lies the essence of the so calledclash of
civilizations and its camouflaged link to the peace
process. All else is detail. On the other hand, an Arab negotiator
whose thought logic is reconstructed within the very framework of his
adversarys is reduced basically to a supplicant rather than a
counterpart. His will and perceptions of reality continue to be
managed and altered by the opponent, with any settlement arrived at
likely to hinge solely on contingent power relations.

In
focusing on the new Islamic enemy, the US has targeted what it calls
fundamentalist and terrorist groups, aiming
with the collaboration of client regimes and to different degrees of
success, at neutralizing and marginalizing them. Any Islamist
oppositional group was depicted as a disturber of peace...(and)
designated to be an outlaw of humanity (Schmitt, 1976: 79). Yet
in so doing, both parties seem to overlook ...the dynamic way
in which the environment of conflict gets out of control
(Burton, 1990: 52). While it may be feasible to crush such groups
through the overwhelming power of the state and/or external
assistance, this does not solve the problem as long as the
environmental conditions leading to their emergence remain in place
and regenerate. Secondly, their suppression does not necessarily lead
to the containment of Islamic dynamism, since the vitality of Islam
is not constrained by, nor dependent upon their existence. Islam has
a long and inherent tradition of revival, renewal and resurgence.
Thirdly, even though many of those groups could or had been actually
marginalized, by mainstreaming Islam in public life and society at
large, they have nevertheless succeeded in scoring a major strategic
victory. Despite his assessment of political Islam as a failure,
Olivier Roy (1994: 78) could still notice that although the specter
of Islamic revolution has been fading, Islamic symbols continue to
penetrate the society and the political discourse of the Muslim world
more than ever. In a dialectical fashion, the retreat of political
Islam has been accomplished by the advancement of Islam as a social
condition. What Roy does not appear to anticipate is the dynamics of
exponential change that is independent of the existence of
politicized groups but which, if unhindered, would ultimately lead to
their victory.

Exponential
change is a substantive process, which involves a preliminarily slow
and gradual subterranean shift.12 In its earlier stages it
borders on being imperceptible or even natural, calling for no
special attention or in all practicalities not much could be done
about it. Serious difficulties would arise, for instance, if Muslims
were to be pressured or dissuaded from practicing their faith or
rituals. But then, rituals do have practical social consequences and
implications, which can not be isolated from the overall environment.
They keep the faith and its values alive and are the foundations of
its reproduction and its social and political influence. Under
stress, they are frequently imbued with socio-political content as an
expression of protest and opposition. Given the nature of the
conflict promoting environment created by peace
dialectics and its concomitant structures, social Islam
at one stage or the other may very well transform into a political
wave of mainstream religious activism engulfing society at large.
Peace dialectics become conducive to the development of a
religio-national psychological mode, cutting across diverse social
strata, strongly disposed toward resisting its impositions. This
transformation, while subtle, inevitably reflects the substantive
differences in conflict perceptions based upon costs as opposed to
entitlements. In contradistinction to the former quantification, the
latter demarcations will be basic, fundamental,
consciousness based and less mutable
(Huntington, 1993: 22 & 29). Very few if any of the existing
regimes appear capable, willing or qualified to make credible claims
to such alternatives or deal with their transformative implications.
For instance, Osama al-Baz, (1998: 6) the political advisor to
Mubarak responded to the Israeli negotiators stalemating
intransigence by declaring that the Arab states have several
options, the most important of which is the convening of a new
international conference to save the peace process. Such
statements which, reflect bankruptcy rather than the availability of
any real choice structure, manifest a condition of entrapment.
Entrapment is a decision-making process whereby (regimes)
escalate their commitment to a previously chosen, though failing,
course of action in order to justify or make good on
prior investments. This dynamic frequently leads to
irrational decision making and outcomes to the extent
that it escalates commitment when de­escalation or opting out may
be the more intelligent thing to do (Brockner & Rubin, 1985: 5 &
7).13 And while it may be argued that an alternative
Islamist agenda may offer no assurances for a successful extrication,
it would uphold a real measure of commitment and hope, given that the
only guarantee the virtually failing state seems to be
able to offer is abject defeat.

The
peace process is contributing to the regeneration and the
recharging of its own nemesis by reconnecting religion to the
internal and external organizing principles of politics and strategy.Such linkage would allow for an ideological thrust to bear, that
could serve to mobilize Arab/Muslim society and to channel its
commitments toward the counter-transformation of the negotiating
rules. Islam as a national resource could create options and space
that are vital within the context of the threats that the Arab and
Muslim nation face. By redefining the conflict in terms of its
broader religious and strategic horizons, while working actively
toward the construction of new identity reconfigurations, Islam could
provide for a situation in which an asymmetry in the
[re]evaluation of stakes may offset an asymmetry in the national
power of the participants in a struggle (Lockhart, 1979: 93).
Such potential may heavily tilt the balance against the existing
negotiating regimes and erode their sense of security and legitimacy.Neutralizing such challenges has called for a collaborative
effort, between local rulers on the one hand, and regional and global
forces on the other, in order to crush militant or serious
oppositional manifestations. Through suppression and education
for peace they seek to snuff out the very value system upon
which Muslims motivations may come to be based on (i.e. Islam
itself). Peace and war on Islam/justice have become two
congruent if not, in many ways, identical processes.

Conclusion

Religious
and strategic factors continue to converge and conflate in their own
special way, as the prospects of the American-Israeli peace
persist in harboring the roots of humiliation and bitterness.
Defining Islam as the new enemy after the collapse of communism
constitutes a strategic decision foreshadowing the American-Israeli
project of redrawing the political and potentially geographical map
of the Arab World. This upcoming wave will not only target disparate
or marginalized Islamist groups or just Muslim regimes, but more
broadly mainstream Islam and mainstream society. Expectations of the
kind have slowly introduced a subtle messianic streak in conflict
perceptions among many Muslims, and contributed to projecting images
of upcoming apocalyptic events.

These
policies, aiming at restructuring regional identities, are becoming
increasingly transparent, exposing Israel not solely as a Palestinian
national security threat, but a much broader Arab/Islamic one. The
conflict will likely continue to transform in direct proportion to
the increasing intensity of threat perceptions. That Islam is being
politicized is not simply a matter of a religious doctrine that does
not allow for the separation of religion and politics, but more
fundamentally, a matter of justice and strategic considerations as
well as religious convictions. In its call to arms, Islam is not
about violence and extremism but about the legitimate and unequivocal
right to self-defense. It is a statement that threats to security,
identity and religious values can not be contained by suppression or
by mere settlement arrangements. By the same token, peace
as cant is not about negotiations and cooperation but about the
destruction of values. It is a statement that motives, at the very
core of human needs and existence, will have to be neutralized and/or
compromised.

Western
conflict resolution mechanisms do not seem to be well equipped to
cope with these unique characteristics of present and future
Arab-Israeli antagonisms, nor with their neo-hostility structures.
Available theoretical constructs have externalized religious beliefs
as determining components, reducing them to culturally alterable
variables. Religiously held convictions, and especially Muslims
views of their Jewish/Zionist adversary, remain fixed conflict
parameters. Conflict theorys reaction was to continue to reject
such factors, largely as a source of cognitive dissonance, and to
perceive religion more as a matter of unwelcome complexity that falls
beyond the limits of the field, except perhaps as a reduced cultural
variable. As a result, acts of violence and resistance perpetrated
under the rubric of religious justification are either condemned as
terrorist aberrations or analyzed and understood in a rather
condescending fashion. What these theories have utterly failed to do
is to address crucial questions regarding whether the weak have
the right to make a different set of rules for themselves
(Orwell, 1981: 40). More importantly, how conflict mechanisms can
cope with the Israeli-Palestinian showdown as only one facet of a
multi-dimensional conflict in which religion is a parameter not a
variable, as these mechanisms imply. These implicit yet very real
underpinnings will continue to undermine the impositions of the
peace process. The fear that the Arab/Muslim World would
go Islamist is the fear that Western settlement
mechanisms do not and cannot meet the basic human needs of its
people.

Notes

1
The Balfour Declaration dated November 2, 1917 was just five weeks
before Jerusalem fell to the forces of the British General Edmund
Allenby. In so doing, Great Britain was basically reneging on its
promises of independence made to the Arabs in return for their
support against the Turks during WWI (Heikal, 1996: 28-29).

2
According to the King-Crane commission, appointed by American
President Woodrow Wilson for the purpose of determining which of the
Western nations should act as the mandatory power for Palestine,
...the initial claim, often submitted by Zionist
representatives, that they have a right to Palestine,
based on an occupation of two thousand years ago, can hardly be
seriously considered. (Laqueur & Rubin, 1995: 27).

3
Harkabi was a former Chief of Israeli Military intelligence
(1955-1959), and an advisor on intelligence to the Israeli Prime
Minister Menachem Begin. While aiming at breaking-down the Arab
consensus, the US subsequently proclaimed itself an honest
broker. (US Letter of Assurances to the Palestinians, October
18, 1991, in Laqueur and Rubin, 1995: 576). In the same letter, the
Americans indicated that negotiations would take place along two
tracks between Israel and Arab States and Israel and Palestinians,
effectively singling them out through the very structure of the
negotiation framework (Laqueur and Rubin, 1995: 574).

4
In a Report of a Study Group Convened by the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences it was proposed: Regional water plans
would be an important component of the bilateral and multilateral
accords. The opportunity to increase access to water would serve as
one of the inducements for Israel to negotiate security
accords with its neighbors. Projects to be given high priority would
include the Unity Dam on the Yarmouk River involving Jordan, Syria
and Israel, pipelines for water from the Litani River in Lebanon and
from Turkey or Egypt, and a joint Jordan-Israel desalinization plant
in Eilat/Aqaba (Lesch, 1992: 158). Notice the pattern of
concessions required of the Arabs so that Israel would simply accept
negotiating security accords with its neighbors; Israeli security of
course being paramount over other actors considerations. A
security for peace rather than the Madrid land for peace formula is
clearly being suggested here several years before Netanyahus
coming to power.

5
According to Benjamin Netanyahu, Yitzhak Rabin, the assassinated
Labor party leader and ex-Prime Minister, was very clear that
there were no limitations whatsoever on Israeli construction in
Jerusalem. Rabin was the one who authorized the building of Har Homa
(Jabal Ghoneim colony) (Netanyahu, 1997a: 51).

6
For instance, despite Barak's intransigence and in response to
abstract pledges, the US declared its commitment to maintaining
Israel's qualitative edge and deterrent
capability. This included upgrading Israel's airforce and Arrow
defense systems ($ 250 million), increasing aid from $ 1.9 billion to
$ 2.4 billion a year, and finally obtaining congressional approval to
provide $ 1.2 billion so that Israel can build fortified
by-pass roads to isolated settlements in the occupied
West Bank to ensure a secure Israeli redeployment under
the terms of the 1998 Wye agreement (Usher, 1999).

7
Commenting on the result, and perhaps justifying Netanyahus
position and his own call for redesigning the Oslo agreements,
Kissinger stated that any analogy to the early stages of the peace
process was illusory. As he put it in the earlier negotiation,
step-by-step progress relieved tensions and built confidence. On the
West Bank, the opposite was the case. Both sides had jumped into the
"peace process" without having clarified workable
objectives and expected to wrest that clarity from the process
itself. Instead, it has compounded their perplexities. This was no
accident. Clearly, Arafat was led to believe by Israeli, American and
European interlocutors that the final destination was at least the
'67 borders and recognition of a Palestinian statehood. But that
ignored the vast difference in the negotiations between Israel and
the PLO compared with those between Israel and the neighboring Arab
states(Kissinger, 1997).

8
Note how Mansour equates Jewish Israel with Arab Palestine and
Jordan. He also seems to be insinuating that extending the water to
Israel may be the price Egypt, in its commitment to the
Arab cause, may have to pay. In what is tantamount to a trial
balloon, Mansour appears to be reviving the offer which Sadat had
made in the early 1980s to extend the Nile water to Israel in return
for Arab land; an offer which the Menachem Begin Likud government
rejected at the time. This is where the Toushki project,
claiming to create a new living space in the South-Western part of
the country, may come in handy as a scenario. Based on this project,
Egypt would make a case for much needed additional sources of water
supply, which could be accessed if an agreement is reached whereby
African states would gain financially. Egypt would receive more water
and so would Israel. Any internal opposition could then be denounced
as unpatriotic, foolish and perhaps even treasonous since it would
undermine the national project of Toushki. In this
set scenario, providing Israel with water would be the
nationalistic thing to do. Perhaps at the heart of this
matter lies Egypts real hostility to the Islamic regime in
Sudan, which appears to be oblivious to financial incentives of the
kind and therefore perceived as an obstacle to such a grand design.

9
Moshe Dayan told President Jimmy Carter, before Anwar Sadats
visit to Israel that the future is with Egypt. If you take one
wheel off a car, it wont drive.... Mirroring this view,
Carter indicated in his memoirs that it was fairly obvious that
the key to any future military threats against Israel was the
Egyptians... Yitzhak Rabin indicated Syria alone was no
problem whatsoever for Israel, and that terrorism is not
a threat to Israels existence... I wish that the so called PLO
would be the only problem. Egypt, he stressed is
the key country (quotes in Finkelstein 1995: 171).

10
Commenting on several polls in the Arab World related to this matter,
Edward Said (1995: 134) observed: In every instance public
opinion has in fact expressed no enthusiasm for normalization with
Israel. On mass level this suggests that the sense of defeat is not
quite as widespread and prostrate as official policy and the logic of
capitulationist intellectuals would have us believe. In the
same vein, an Al-Ahram Weekly poll result indicated that the
Egyptian public ... (has) its own ax to grind with Israel (as
quoted by Gerges 1995: 75). Even Shenouda III, the Coptic Patriarch
of Egypt, prohibited his followers from making pilgrimages to
Jerusalem, declaring that (t)he Christians of Egypt will not be
the traitors of the Arab World (as quoted in Heikal, 1996a:
553).

11
At the Oslo meeting held during the first week of November 1999,
between Arafat, Barak and Bill Clinton, Barak, according to Newsweek
signaled his willingness to accept a Palestinian state. But to
the consternation of the Clinton administration and Palestinian
leaders, he also made it clear he wants to disentangle the two
economies_. Many Palestinians believe that such disengagement would
be a disaster_ Note the psychological pressure exerted and the
clear Palestinian dependency on Israel. One can not but wonder as to
the nature of the prospective state (Klaidman & Rees,
1999).

12
A typical exponential change curve moves along in an almost
horizontal line for a long period of time (tradition) before showing
any marked shift in direction. Then, once there is a significant
increase in the rate of change there is a sudden acceleration until
the curve moves into a nearly vertical direction--a wave of
mainstream change or revolution (Burton, 1990: 53-54).

13
Quote de-italicized. Irrationality here is not to be confused
with the sense in which non­rationality has been used
above in the Finnish and Vietnamese cases. Irrational decisions could
be made based on extreme caution and calculations. To many it would
seem to be rational not to waste away sunk costs--a situation in
which seeming rational inputs could lead to irrational outcomes.

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